by Robin Hale
There were chuckles and murmurs of agreement from around the room, and Harriet rose from her chair and made her way close to my side.
“Jeannie mentioned that you didn’t know anything about your father,” she began, reaching into the large handbag that she carried. “So I dug through some old photos and I found this one.” She pulled out a photograph tucked inside a plastic frame and handed it to me.
I recognized the woman in the photo immediately. It was Olivia, the woman who had given birth to me. The woman who had run from her coven without telling anyone why. She beamed at the person holding the camera, caught in the middle of a laugh and leaning back against a man whose face I had only recently seen in my dreams.
His eyes were the same muddy hazel that I saw in the mirror every morning, and the crooked way he smiled was echoed on my face. That was the man from my dream about the clearing in Burnet Woods. The one with the aura of a lion.
“This is my father?” I whispered, touching the front of the frame carefully.
Harriet nodded. “That’s right. Olivia married him approximately five minutes after they met, seemed like. Ran off to the courthouse like they couldn’t wait.” Her brow furrowed and a shadow passed over her expression. “I wonder if she knew something.”
The possibility snagged in my brain. It caught on something sharp and burrowed its way into my growing understanding of my power, how it worked.
“Was he a witch, too?” I asked.
“Greg? Oh, no.” Harriet shook her head. “No, Greg was a shapeshifter. Part of the Leo pack, I think. Not all of them are lions, of course,” Harriet said in a tone that implied ‘obviously’. “But he was. Most gorgeous shift you’ve ever seen.”
“He used to read to your mother’s belly when she was carrying you.” Harriet’s smile went fond and vaguely misty. “They’d bicker over whether or not ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe’ was anti-witch, pro-shifter propaganda.” She chuckled.
I tried to imagine the scene, filling in the details with the image I held in my hands. Maybe he held one hand over her belly and propped the book open with the other. Maybe she sat back against his chest and she could feel his voice as well as hear it.
Everything I imagined felt staged, not quite real.
I wrapped my hands around the frame and tried to summon memories from the little glimpses that Harriet’s stories gave me, wishing — not for the first or last time — that I could have met the people she spoke of.
“You know, it wouldn’t surprise me a whit if Olivia and Greg were soul mates,” Harriet said with a smile, looking down at the photo with soft eyes.
Something about the way she said it landed strangely. It didn’t sound metaphorical. She didn’t sound like she meant ‘they were really in love’. “Soul mates?”
“Oh sure, not everyone will run into theirs. But Olivia? I can’t imagine she’d miss out.” Harriet smiled wider and looked back at me when I couldn’t break my stunned silence. “Has no one —? Of course not. Who would’ve?” Her expression went distant, shuttered while she retreated into her mind to try and figure out how best to explain.
I couldn’t breathe until she started talking again.
“Every witch, shifter, vampire — you name it. We all share a sense of magic even if we can’t all use it directly. Well, some people have magic that’s so perfectly aligned, so perfectly compatible that they can open up whole new avenues of understanding.” Harriet’s hands flew in the space between us. “You know how you felt when you joined your magic with the coven? It’s like that, but more complete. Soul mates aren’t common, but they aren’t rare. And if we don’t find them this time, we all like to believe we will in our next go around.”
My mind swarmed with questions, so many that I couldn’t pick one to ask. So many that I sat there, dazed and silent, and hoped that my parents had been soul mates. I hoped that they’d had that kind of connection.
And I prayed that I would find one myself.
“You’ve reached the phone of Janice Pearson. I’m unavailable right now, but if you leave your name, number, and a brief message I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
The familiar beep came over the line as I lingered outside the Wyrm, still listening to the laughter inside.
“Hi, Mom! It’s me,” I said, cringing. Obviously it was me. I was her only child. “Just calling to catch up and let you know that I’ve made some friends!” Jean’s warning about the Council and their dim view of anyone breaking something they called the ‘Silence’ rang in my mind. “It’s fantastic, really. I wish you could be here to meet everyone. I’ve even, uh, even met a girl! I mean, I’ve met a bunch of women but —” I cut myself off and tried again. “I met this woman I’m interested in. I don’t think she’s into me in quite the same way, but you were always telling me to put myself out there and I wanted to let you know that I am!”
I bit my lip and fought the urge to sigh.
“I miss you. I love you and I hope I’ll get to talk to you soon. Don’t worry about me, okay? I’ve joined this — this book club. And I think I’ve finally found what I was looking for.”
Getting ready for bed that night was impossible. I went through the motions: changing into pajamas, brushing my teeth, washing my face. I even spent a little time doing focused breathing exercises that a therapist had once recommended — the same therapist who precipitated my move out of Nebraska by asking ‘What would happen if you took the chance?’ — and tried to relax.
But it was no use.
I was too wired. The world had changed too much and I was too excited about everything that I was newly tapped into. That and I didn’t have the convenient healing-exhaustion and adrenaline crash that had flung me into sleep the night that Rhea brought me home.
Rhea.
I sat up in bed and reached up toward the silver and crystal pendant that hung in my window. It glittered in the filtered light from the streetlamps, sparkling when my fingertip grazed it and sent it turning. I couldn’t keep the smile from my face while I looked at it.
Things were obviously not where I wanted them to be with Rhea — but surely she wouldn’t have given me a sleep charm if she didn’t care?
The more I thought about it, the easier it became to convince myself that she did care about me even if she wasn’t ready to jump into something romantic. And for me? Rhea was exactly what I wanted. She was strong, independent. She knew who she was and she didn’t make apologies for it. She had this...ferocity. A devoted faithfulness that I ached to feel directed my way.
I bit my lip and considered the charm once more. I didn’t know how to trigger a prophetic dream or if my magic would allow me to do that. But maybe I could influence my dreams? Maybe I could have a pleasant dream about Rhea — not magical or anything, just nice — if I spent some time thinking about her while I was drifting off.
The sheets and blankets clung around me with a sensual quality they definitely hadn’t had the first time I’d settled into bed that night. Intention seemed to be the difference, and a self-conscious sort of heat rose in my cheeks as I closed my eyes to conjure up images of Rhea.
Rhea in the greenhouse, wearing one of those sleeveless tees she liked so much. Sweat and dirt marking her forearms, highlighting her scars. Muscles shifting beneath the clinging black cotton.
Rhea coming out of nowhere in the woods, determination on her face and a hard right fist across the snout of the were that had attacked me.
Rhea carrying me over her shoulder away from danger, toward someone who could save me.
Rhea sitting with me, making sure that I ate, checking my room for nameless horrors and practically tucking me into bed.
Every image that floated across my mind made my chest ache and something at the tip of my spine burn with longing. She was exactly what I wanted — and there had been moments, brief, shining moments where her guard was down and she’d let herself relax, that I’d believed I could be what she wanted, too.
Consciousness sli
pped away as I longed for her. I slid into my dreams with one thought: that no matter what might happen between us, I wanted nothing more than for Rhea Barnes to be happy.
12
Rhea
I pulled the back door of the Book Wyrm open, trusted-vendor code keyed in from muscle memory, and eased the box I carried higher in my arms. The back room — little more than a receiving area and a closet, if I was being honest — was already full of taped boxes of inventory that had yet to make it onto the floor. Jean must have run out of room in the office and she was moving the spillover wherever she could.
I didn’t envy her. Getting the Book Wyrm in smooth running order again would be brutal. Handing off a business to someone new as never an easy proposition, even when you’d been raised in it. I knew that intimately.
I should’ve put the box down and gotten a signature from Jean later. There wasn’t any urgency on the delivery and if I examined my own motivations too closely I’d find that I was making excuses to drop by. I should’ve left. But the door from the back room into the main floor of the shop stood slightly ajar, and I could see Laurel at the front counter from my vantage point. The sun was low enough in the sky that the light filtering in through the front windows lit her hair in a halo around her. Her laugh echoed through the small back room and the corners of her eyes crinkled with the force of her smile.
Goddess, she was gorgeous.
I hadn’t seen her since the day she’d walked through the house at Barleywick. There’d been no last-minute rush order from Jean, no conveniently-timed errand to bring me to the shop, or Laurel out to the greenhouse. Whatever it was that had been nudging the two of us together, it had quieted down.
I’d probably quieted it myself by telling her to focus on her coven.
When I’d stopped — elbow deep in fertilizing one of the raised beds — and realized it had been days since I’d seen her, I found myself in my truck headed into the city with all the dignity of a puppy trailing after her mistress. Pathetic.
The box in my arms was an inadequate fig-leaf for what I was doing there — which was another reason to put it down and leave before I ran into Jean. That smug, knowing look on her face would be insufferable. With one last glance toward Laurel, I turned to head out the back door again, just in time to see the side entrance to Jean’s office slide open.
And there it was: just as smug and knowing as ever.
Damn it.
I quirked a brow at Jean and grunted something noncommittal, redoubling my efforts to drop the box I and slip out the back.
“Not going to say hello to her?” Jean asked with a lilting tease in her voice.
“I’m not here to see her. I’m making a delivery.” The box became a shield, a necessary prop while I tried to add it to a stack already standing by the door.
“Oh, come on. I’ve known you a long time, Rhea.” Jean narrowed her eyes at me. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen you look at someone like you’re hungry.”
I shook my head but didn’t quite trust myself to speak. I knew how it was to try to keep anything from Jean. Fucking impossible.
“You know she thinks you’re ‘super-hot’. Her words.” Jean cocked her head and offered me a sly smile.
I could only imagine the circumstances that would lead to Laurel saying anything close to that. And if she’d been saying it to Jean, it definitely hadn’t been on an even playing field.
“She shouldn’t get involved with — my kind of baggage,” I ground out past the desire to bare my soul to the blonde witch. “And you know I don’t need the risk involved in chasing after her. That coyote didn’t find her by accident, Jean.”
“So, what? You’re going to make yourself stay miserable and alone so that you don’t accidentally get attached to someone the Council might someday notice?” Jean sounded exasperated, and I couldn’t blame her. Said like that, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. But that wasn’t the entire story and Jean knew it.
Jean reached out, gripped my upper arm with a friendly touch, and lowered her voice into a soft whisper. “You know that no one blames you for what happened, Rhea.”
Shame and pain rushed through me, sending heat into my neck and face and an uncomfortable tilting in my gut. I certainly did not know that. “The Council does, Jean. And that’s enough.”
“You should ask her out. Stop punishing yourself!” Jean sidled over to the door to the main floor of the shop, smile turning wicked. “You could take her to the Harvest Moon.” Her hand wrapped around the door and my eyes went wide as I realized — too late — what she was about to do.
“Jean, don’t —” I started. But she already had.
The door slid open and Jean’s voice went unnaturally loud as she called out, “Oh, hi Rhea! Hey, could you bring that up to the front counter for me?”
I glared at Jean and was caught frozen for a moment, torn between dropping the box and escaping out the back door as quickly as I could manage it and giving in to the part of me that was dying to talk to Laurel. I was pathetic. And Jean knew just how to put her finger on the scale.
“Oh, is Rhea back there?” I heard Laurel’s voice through the widening crack in the door. “Thank you for the — uh,” Laurel caught herself on the edge of shouting something she evidently shouldn’t have. “Help. I really appreciate it.”
Help? What help? Did she mean the advice about Greenhollow? The possibility that she was thanking me for warning her away off my company wasn’t exactly pleasant.
Not that Jean knew that. Jean’s eyes sparkled with delight and she grinned at me until my resolve to leave finally crumbled.
“Not one word, Wyatt,” I growled.
A low chuckle was Jean’s only response as she pushed the door the rest of the way open. The sound of the bell on the front door marked the only customer’s departure, and the afternoon light gave the whole shop an otherworldly feeling. It was soft in there. Dreamlike. But I’d never had a dream that didn’t end in screaming — and I was pretty sure I hadn’t done anything to deserve one that good.
I carried the box out in front of me in a ridiculous display of legitimacy. ‘See?’ I practically shouted. ‘I belong here. This is normal. I didn’t show up because I couldn’t stay away anymore.’
“There on the counter is fine,” Jean said, breaking through the unnatural stiffness of my performance. “Thanks for bringing that stuff over on such short notice!” All right, maybe Jean could live if she was going to cover for my weirdness. “It’ll be great to have these —” My heart lurched as I waited for her to pick a noun, but she didn’t specify any further. “At the Harvest Moon.”
Laurel cocked her head. “What’s the Harvest Moon?” She asked. She’d watched me approaching with such an open, guileless smile on her face that I felt like some kind of troll for having come there on the flimsiest excuse. One of those Scandinavian trolls, the ones who kidnapped beautiful young women and carried them off.
With a sudden jolt, Jean pulled her phone from her pocket and stared down at the glowing screen. “Oh, yikes. I need to handle this. I’m going to be in the office — Rhea, you mind filling Laurel in on the Harvest Moon? Thanks!” She shot me a bright, shit-eating grin and darted back toward her office door.
When she passed me, I could see there wasn’t any sort of notification on her lock screen and I heroically stuffed down the need to roll my eyes. All the subtlety of a were in a henhouse, that one.
Laurel turned those hazel eyes of hers to me expectantly.
“The Harvest Moon is a community festival,” I said, looking down at the box I’d slid onto the counter. I pulled a knife from my pocket to give my hands something to do and set about opening the thing up. “All of the star-born groups go. Before the Accords, it was the only night of truce that there was. And now…now I guess it’s a celebration that we’ve mostly stopped killing each other.” Mostly.
I chanced a sidelong glance at Laurel’s face and took in her look of astonishment. What the hell had Jean been telli
ng her — or rather, not telling her — that would make any of that surprising to hear?
“I —” Laurel’s voice caught in her throat and I could see the questions piling up behind her tongue, fighting to get out first. “What does star-born mean?”
“That’s us.” The carefully labeled bullshit that I had written out on an inventory slip was the first thing out of the box. “Witches, vampires, shifters…all of the people who have some form of magic that makes them something other than human. It’s a myth that our magic originally came from the stars, but we’re a superstitious community so the idea stuck and now that’s what we are. Star-born.”
The tightly wrapped bundles of herbs for blessing came out of the box next and those did belong at the Harvest Moon. So it wasn’t a total lie, what Jean had said. She just didn’t know that at the time.
Laurel smiled a soft, private smile and nodded. “‘Star-born’. I like it. Are people who aren’t star-born something else, then? Like, ‘moon-born’ or something?”
The corner of my mouth quirked entirely against my will. “Just human. That’s nice, though, ‘moon-born’. But no. Maybe ‘out-of-towners’ if there’s one of them in earshot and you need them not to know.” By halfway down the box, I was coming to things I couldn’t remember having thrown in.
“And what are the — Accords? You said?” Laurel hopped up onto the tall stool behind the counter and leaned forward, hands around her coffee mug and watching me, rapt with attention.
I could feel the weight of her eyes on me, comforting and reassuring and grounding. I waited for the first lick of fear from the edge of my instincts and wasn’t disappointed. Clockwork. Anything that good couldn’t be trusted.